Ty Lawson made unexpected waves this summer when he reposted a popular picture of Harden, the Houston Rockets star guard, as the Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator. The connection? Dallas’ defense, which was historically bad last season and got off to a slow start this season, was being run by one of the NBA’s most notoriously, shall we say, lax, defensive players.

For Lawson, a Washington fan, it was hilarious. And let’s be honest: It kind of was.

But …

Lawson’s phone nearly exploded from the hundreds of text messages he received after posting it. He swears the reposted picture wasn’t a jab at Harden’s defense — just the Cowboys’.

“It was just the Cowboys,” Lawson explained. “I wasn’t looking at James Harden.”

He continued.

“I was just looking at James Harden, the way his face was, the way he was staring. It looked like, ‘I’m pissed because the defense is terrible.’ So I go to the View House to watch the Broncos game and I’m getting like 1,000, 2,000 retweets and people talking trash. And I’m like ‘What did I post?’ So I looked at it again. And people were saying that James is the worst defender, and that’s when I was like ‘Ohhh, what did I do?’ But it was at the point of no return. I couldn’t have been like, delete; everybody would have thought I was soft. So I just had to ride it out.”

To be clear, this wasn’t smack talk to Harden?

“Nah, it wasn’t. Hours (after I posted it) I was like why am I getting so much love and hate from it. And then I realized, they thought I was taking a shot at James Harden, which I’m not. Me and James are real cool.”

Harden was with the USA Basketball team when it all went down. Lawson has not talked with him yet about any of it.

“I haven’t heard from him yet, but I know he definitely saw it,” Lawson said, smiling. “I guarantee that Houston game is going to have a lot of fire.”

Circle it now. The first meeting between the Nuggets and Rockets is Dec. 13 in Houston.

Chris Dempsey arrived at The Denver Post in Dec. 2003 after seven years at the Boulder Daily Camera, where he primarily covered the University of Colorado football and men's basketball teams. A University of Colorado-Boulder alumnus, Dempsey covers the Nuggets and also chips in on college sports.